


In The Shadow Of A War

by KLStarre



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Family, Gen, Guilt, Letters, Nightmares, Pre-Canon, The Rebellion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-14 00:28:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9148708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KLStarre/pseuds/KLStarre
Summary: "Every time one of my soldiers-at-arms dies, I blame the hazy voice of my mother as she sings me to sleep. Every time I miss the thought of you, I blame my father’s arms as he carries me over his shoulders. It’s a terrible way to live, hating those who you are supposed to love."Alternatively: A series of letters from Cassian Andor to the son he left behind, filled with desperation for, if not forgiveness, than at least understanding.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is dedicated to PsychSpark, aka downhilltumbler.tumblr.com, for inspiring the format, turning this from a drabble to something that's probably going to be around 20k, and just being a generally awesome person. Enjoy!
> 
> [EDIT]: This was previously titled "Five Years of Apologies", if you're confused as to why you're getting alerts for a story that you've never heard of.

Dear son,

            I don’t know your name. I don’t know where you are, or what you’re like, or whether or not you sleep through the night. I guess, technically, I don’t even know if you _are_ a son. You might be a daughter, or something else. But I think you’re a son. Your mother told me that you were, when we first learned that you had been conceived, and she knows things like that. She knows people.

            And I don’t suppose it will matter what I think, in the end. It’s unlikely that you’ll get these letters, and you’re too young, now, to read them, anyway. Maybe your mother will read them to you, but it seems unlikely. Mail is strange, and old-fashioned, and besides that, she’d sooner burn anything I send than risk it poisoning you. I loved your mother, I hope she knows that. She wasn’t just another in a long line, like she thinks. I love too easily, that’s my problem. I hope it’s yours, too.

            There are much worse problems to have.

\-- Cassian. Your father.

 

Dear son,

            I’m a soldier in the Rebellion, did you know that? An intelligence officer, overseeing the training of new recruits and finding ways to exploit the weaknesses of the enemy. That’s why I’m not there for you. I’m fighting for your freedom and your safety, and then, once I’m done, once we’ve won, I’ll come back. That’s what I told your mother, and she didn’t believe me. She thought I was just another man, coming in and using her for the night and then leaving, so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences.

            Maybe she’s right. Maybe you’re better off without me. What the hell do I know about family? The only family I ever had were soldiers too busy to learn my name. I don’t blame them, of course. I understand. But I really did mean to come back. I want you to know that, someday when you grow up and hate me for I did. And that’s fair, that’s a fair response. You’re entitled to it, and you’re allowed to feel it. How could I tell you it’s not, when I hate myself for leaving, more than you ever could? But you weren’t just some one-night accident, and I didn’t mean to abandon you, and someday I _will_ be back, even if it’s too late for it to mean anything. And then, hopefully, I can earn something from you. Maybe not love, or trust. Maybe it’s too late for that. But I want to earn your understanding.

            I thought it would be over by now, this war. I’ve been part of it my whole life, since I was six. That’s fifteen years, kid. You don’t sign up for a war thinking that it’s going to last fifteen years. Not that I signed up. But, you know. The principle remains. I left your mom when she was five months pregnant, because I was ordered to move bases, and because I thought that I would be back before you were born. How foolish could I possibly be? How could I have been fighting for this long, sacrificing the entirety of my being for this long, and still have that ridiculous optimism? I had hope, and you’re the one who’s going to suffer for it.

            I’m sorry.

\-- Cassian

 

Dear son,  
            I don’t have nightmares. I should, you know. Everything I’ve done. But I don’t. And it’s not because I don’t regret it, or that I think I was in the right, or that, I don’t know, because I don’t remember it. Because I remember everything.

            I remember the girl with the scales and the glowing eyes, who watched as I killed her mother for having too much information.

            I remember the triad I put in danger by asking too many questions, and I remember how they held each other as Stormtroopers blasted them to death. They weren’t even recognizable, afterwards.

            I remember the soldier of the Empire that we captured, out on a recon mission. We learned a lot from him, and saved a lot of lives because of it. And he had done terrible, terrible things.

            But his is the face that I remember the clearest.

            It’s not that I think it was wrong, or that I would do anything differently, if I could go back. I’ve done terrible, terrible things, just like that soldier, but I’m on the right side. I’m making the world a better place and sometimes, to do that, I have to follow orders that I may not agree with.

            So, I don’t have nightmares. But ever since I met your mother, ever since I had you, well…I’m thinking a lot more about the orders that I follow. I’m letting people go free that maybe I shouldn’t, and I’m taking risks to protect people I’ve never met. Risks that I’d be better off not taking. And I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because of the look of disgust on your mother’s face when I told her I was a soldier. Maybe it’s because I want to be a good role model for you, even if you don’t know me (you will, I promise you will, someday I’ll be back).

            Or maybe it’s because now I understand what it’s like to have something to lose.

\-- Cassian

 

Dear son,

            It may be a while before I write again. I don’t think you read these, anyway, or that your mother reads them to you, or whatever. But. I have to tell you, for my sake, at least. Unread letters are more than I ever got. We’re moving bases again, and no one’s willing to tell us where or why. So everyone is terrified, panicky, and I can’t afford to risk giving away our position right now. If my letters were intercepted, I…well, I don’t know what would happen.

            I don’t know where I’m going, but I do know that I’m going to keep on fighting, for as long as this terrible, terrible war takes. For your sake, and for your mother’s sake, and for the sake of this entire galaxy. I don’t know what you look like, but I don’t need to. When things get bad, when I can’t sleep and when I’m angry and scared and it seems like there’s no hope, I think of you.

            I think of how, someday, I’m going to know your name.

\-- Cassian

 

Dear son,

            It’s been three months since I last wrote, and I’m sorry. I apologize a lot, in these letters. Everywhere else, I am unashamed. But this is different, somehow. I apologize to you because you deserve my sorrow, but I think that, mostly, I apologize for myself. I’m selfish like that. But how am I supposed to be anything else? I was a child and I was abandoned, and the only way to survive was to be selfish. In my first letter, I said that loving too easily was problem, but that was a lie.

            I love for the wrong reasons. I love only for myself.

            I hope that’s not something that you can inherit.

\-- Cassian

 

Dear son,

            I almost died today. If I were with you, in person, and if you knew me as your father, I wouldn’t be telling you this. I would act like I was safe and healthy and okay, in order to be strong for you. But I don’t need to be strong for you. You have your mother for that. I need to be strong for myself, and for the sake of the galaxy and the Rebellion, and the only way to be strong is to talk to someone. And I don’t have friends here. Comrades, yes. Soldiers in arms, yes. But there’s something about growing up knowing that, at any moment, our lives could be ripped away. Something that makes it hard to trust or confide or to be friends of anything besides necessity.

            So I am going to tell you things that no son should know about his father, because you are the only one who I can pretend is listening.

            I almost died today. This isn’t a new experience. I’ve almost died before, many times, and every time I escaped, miraculously, or was rescued, miraculously. Today, I don’t know what happened.

            We have been in our new base on [redacted] for about two months now, maybe two and a half. Nothing has happened in all that time. We’ve kept to ourselves, as we always do, and the locals know that we’re here, but they haven’t bothered us except for a few of them looking to join, to do some good. We’ve continued business as usual, recon missions and searching for allies and sabotaging imperial shipments, and everything has been fine, aside from a few minor issues, but nothing unexpected.

            I guess we got lazy. Or reckless. Everyone is on edge when we first arrive somewhere new, but we’ve been centered here long enough without anything happening that we’ve relaxed. Guards not checking people as thoroughly as they should, doors not locked as tight as they need to be. Don’t be lazy, son. We almost died for it.

            It was early morning, and everything was quiet, and dark, because this planet has a single moon and a painfully weak sun. And then nothing was quiet, and nothing was dark, because every single alarm that we’ve ever had went off, blazing red and screaming like, well. Like the most terrible scream you can imagine. No one knew what was happening, you know? It was panic and screaming and finding blasters and looking for loved ones.

            I don’t have any loved ones, except for you, and I sleep with my blaster. I paid attention to my training, and there’s a reason that I’m rumored to be next up for promotion. So I ran, ran to the entrance of our base to try to hold off whoever was attacking, but I didn’t make it. It was Stormtroopers, kid. More Stormtroopers than I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen more than you can imagine. They were everywhere, destroying everything we had built, killing people in their sleep as if they were no more than lunch meat.

            This is what I’m fighting against. That’s what I have to tell myself, every time it gets to be too much. I am fighting against people who murder other sentient creatures in their sleep, without a hint of hesitation or regret. ~~Of course, I’ve done the same. But it’s for the cause, always for the cause, always for the cause.~~

            One of them stopped me. I had just woken up, and I was angry and scared and confused, and it stopped me. I tried to fight back, to get my blaster against its stomach, or its head, or anywhere that would constitute a threat. But it grabbed me by the front of my uniform, and it pulled me into one of the rooms that we had apparently managed to evacuate. And then it took its helmet off.

            Son, I have never seen a Stormtrooper without its helmet. I don’t know if anyone has. And the thing was, she was human. I don’t know what I was expecting, but that was terrifying, that was the most terrifying thing I have ever seen. I’ve been slaughtering _people_. And yes, I know, of course, that they’re still terrible, that I’m still in the right, that slaughtering isn’t the word to use when I always give them the chance to fight back. But how can I live with myself, now, now that I have seen the face of the enemy. How do _they_ do it, when they can always see us? How can you kill someone when you know that they’re human?

            She looked at me. We locked eyes. And she lifted her blaster, and she pointed it at me, and everything was in slow motion, like it wasn’t even real. And I didn’t move, I didn’t even blink. I stared right into the eyes of the woman who was going to kill me, and I didn’t fight back. I don’t know why. I’ve thought about it and thought about it and I don’t know why. Maybe I’m just tired. Maybe I’m just tired of this goddamn war, of killing people who have been turned into machines. Or maybe I thought I deserved it.

            I’m so young, son. I’m twenty-one and three quarters, and I’ve fathered a child and fought a war and killed friends on an order from a woman I’ve never met.

            Maybe I thought it was someone else’s turn, for once.

            It didn’t matter, in the end. Someone kicked the door in, and shot her for me. They didn’t even seem surprised to see her as a human. They just tossed me a blaster and moved on, quickly, quietly, efficiently. I didn’t even get a chance to tell them I didn’t need their gun.

            Is that what I’m going to become? Is that –

            Is that what I already am?

\-- Cassian

 

Dear son,

            I’ve been having nightmares. I bet you have them, some dreams of your own. You don’t need mine, too, right? Especially when I already told you that I don’t get them. But I know you don’t read these letters, and so I can say whatever I want. They probably disappear into the abyss of space, never to be looked upon by human eyes. Or maybe an imperial soldier finds them all, reads them before bed each night. I hope they offer him some amusement.

            The point is, I’ve been having nightmares, and they’re not about almost dying. I’m used to that, even if that time was different. I’m used to it, and I’ve moved on.

            No. I’ve been having nightmares about not coming back to you. I wanted you to come with me, did you know that? Of course you didn’t. You’re not even a year old. But it’s true, nonetheless. I asked your mother to come with me, to join the Rebellion, and then I could’ve raised you. I could’ve been a father. It’s a custom, here. People with families either leave them behind, or they join us. I should’ve known your mother wouldn’t approve. She was always smarter than me.

            But I thought she might at least consider it. She spat in my face, and told me that if she never saw me again, it would be too soon, and that the fact that I would even _consider_ putting my son in danger meant that I wasn’t worthy of you. She was probably right. Like I said, she was always the smart one.

            Still, though, I want to come back. I want to hold you, before you’re too big to hold. I want to teach you how to grow up into someone who’s not me. I want to watch you learn from my mistakes, and I want to convince your mother that I loved her and that, maybe, when this war is over, I could love her again.

            In my nightmares, the war doesn’t end. In my nightmares, I fight until I am seventy, eighty, ninety. I fight until I can’t stand on my own, and then the Rebellion leaves me, and I am expected to forge myself a new life. Is that fair, do you think? That I give myself to them and they leave me as soon as I am no longer useful? At first, I was angry at the idea. But now, after weeks of these dreams, it makes a terrible sort of sense. My dream-self gave everything he had to the Rebellion. His home was all he had left to give.

            In the dream, I wander. I wander until eventually I return to the planet where you were born. I don’t even know its name, how sad is that? I don’t know the name of the planet where I fathered a son. Sometimes I think I’m nearby, sometimes I think I may even be there, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t come back until the war is won. It’s too much danger, otherwise. It’s too much everything.

            You’re dead, in the dreams. I go to a cemetery, and I find your gravestone, even though I’ve never had the honor of knowing your name. You’re dead, and I wake up screaming, and I never make it long enough to learn about your mother. Maybe she’s outlived you, in this terrible, terrible future. Maybe she’s waiting for me.

            I don’t think so, though. She was never the waiting type.

\-- Cassian

 

Dear son,

            I can’t sleep. I can’t think. It’s midnight, now, and I have a mission tomorrow, but all I can think about is how I didn’t choose this. I didn’t choose this war, and now it’s everything I am, everything I believe in. I’ve been fighting it since I was six years old, fighting it since before I knew what I was fighting for. And like I always tell you, I don’t regret it. I really, really don’t. But it would have been nice to have a choice, you know? It would have been nice to have the option of a family, of parents and a wife or a husband and a child I could help to raise.

            You know I haven’t helped to raise you. And you know I don’t have a wife, either, or at least I think you do. But I want you to know that I don’t have parents, either. Or maybe I don’t want you to know. I think I just need to tell someone. I think I just need to convince myself that someone, somewhere, might care. It’s not like I’ve earned your sympathy, or your love, or your care. But I hope you might give it, anyway, someday when you’re old and I’m older and we can watch the sun rise together.

            We’re alike, you and I, in circumstance if not in spirit. The Empire tore both of us away from what could have been. I barely remember my parents, but I suppose that maybe that’s better than what you have. Although, you have your mother.

            I don’t know. I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong, or what should be and what shouldn’t, anymore. I rely so much on the orders I am given, and that’s important, in a war. But, if my parents had obeyed orders, would I be alive at all? If I had obeyed orders, would you be?

            They gave me to the Rebellion before I was old enough to understand what was happening, and I hate them for it.

            There. I’ve said it. I hate them even though they were acting in my best interest, even though my home planet had been overrun by imperial troops, even though it was the only way to ensure that I might live. Even though they’re probably dead. I hate them even though they loved me enough to give me up, and as much as I try to forgive them, I can’t. Every time one of my soldiers-at-arms dies, I blame the hazy voice of my mother as she sings me to sleep. Every time I miss the thought of you, I blame my father’s arms as he carries me over his shoulders. It’s a terrible way to live, hating those who you are supposed to love.

            I hope you don’t hate me.

\-- Cassian

 

 

Dear son,

            I remember your mother more clearly than anyone else I have ever met. Tell her that for me, will you? Or, well, I suppose she’ll be telling you, when she reads this to you. You’re not even a year old yet. It’s terrible, the things I can forget.

            I fell in love with her the moment I saw her. She was beautiful, her skin dark and more human than anything I had ever seen, her face worn, and tired, and afraid, but welcoming. But that’s not why I loved her. I loved her because she smiled, in spite of it all. I loved her because she danced, not on a stage or for a crowd, but in her seat. She moved to the rhythm of the music like there was nothing else she could have done, and I saw the life that, maybe, I could have had.

            Sometimes, at night, when I’m on watch, I’ll play that first song in my head, to stay awake. I tell myself that it’s the music that was memorable and that it’s the music that helps me to stay awake, but it’s a lie, and I know it. It’s her.

            It’s always her.

            Know that, kid. Know that your mother is an incredible woman. Know that she tries her hardest, and that I was a damned fool to leave. Know that if I had one wish, one wish that I knew would come true, it would be for her to be happy. Not for the war to be over, or to see you – although I want that desperately, constantly, all consumingly. No. It would be for the one person I ever met who deserves happiness to get what she deserves.

            I’m sorry I left. You know I am, or I wouldn’t be writing these. I’m sorry I left, but, sometimes, I’m not.

            Because the truth is, you’re better off without me. You have her, the most amazing woman to ever exist. Why would you need me?

            I don’t know a thing about love.

\-- Cassian

 

Dear son,

            As I’m writing this, it’s your birthday. As you read it, it won’t be anymore. Do you celebrate birthdays, where you’re from? A lot of cultures don’t. But I do, and we would celebrate yours, if I was there.

            You’re turning one. One year old. That doesn’t mean anything to you, although it will, someday. 368 days that I should have been there for you, and that I wasn’t. Lately, I’ve found myself hoping that you _don’t_ celebrate birthdays. That way, you see, you won’t hate me any more than you already will, and your mother has one less thing to blame me for.

            But whether you do or not, I’m thinking about it. Do you want to know what I’ll be doing today, on the day of my only child’s first birthday? You don’t, of course. No one wants to know. No one wants to know what I have to do, the dirty work. “Cassian,” they say, “Take care of it.” Their consciences get to be clear, because they don’t know what ‘taking care of it’ entails. I’m the conscience of this whole damn revolution, or at least that’s what it feels like, and I’ve never been known for my moral fiber. “That’s Cassian,” they say. “He’ll do anything.”

            And they’re wrong, but also, they’re right. I’ll do anything that needs to done to end this war. I’ll do anything that will give the Rebellion an advantage, anything for the greater good.

            Which is why, on the night of the end of my son’s first year of life, I will be taking children as hostages. A few weeks ago, I found out about the location where they raise children of imperial officers. They’re not allowed to care for them themselves, of course, and so they’re raised by low-level Stormtroopers, fed nothing but imperial propaganda from the moment they’re born. Once you know that, it’s hard to blame the soldiers for who they are, and what they do. This is all they know. And their children are in danger, constantly, always, if they put one foot out of line –

            Before I had you, I didn’t know what that was like. I didn’t understand, didn’t have the faintest clue what that fear could be like. But now I know. I know, and I am still going to follow my orders, because no matter the reasons of the individuals, the Empire is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and something has to be done to stop it.

            It’s just going to be me and two others, two whom I’ve chosen specifically for this mission. They trust me, god knows why. Everyone trusts me. And I trust them, as far as I am able.

            We’ll be breaking in at night, disabling the guards, and taking as many children as we can. And I’ll be trying to ignore that I have a child of my own, that to know that you were unsafe would destroy me. Their parents don’t have feelings, or at least not the right kind. These are officers we’re talking about, not simple soldiers. They joined because they wanted to, because they truly thought that the Empire was in the right, and they voluntarily gave up their children to be raised by faceless drones who can’t even aim a blaster.

            What do I have to feel guilty about?

            I don’t even know what the Rebellion is going to do with them.

            Raise them to our side, like I was? Kill them, to rob the enemy of an advantage? Keep them as hostages, in exchange for information? Or weapons? Or surrender?

            I don’t care. I keep telling myself that. I don’t care. It’s the only way to keep going, in a war. I shouldn’t be telling you this. I should be telling you that you should always care, that you should always be aware of how your actions affect other people. I think that that’s what fathers are supposed to do, to tell their children about how to be good people, and how to make the world a better place.

            Instead, here I am, teaching you how to fight a war. And you’ve only just turned one. It’s not my fault.

            I’m just taking orders.

\-- Cassian       

 


End file.
